


What is the Paleolithic era?

by Northerlywind



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 14:12:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3123140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northerlywind/pseuds/Northerlywind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Clint has recurring dreams of getting hammered on a quiz show by Tony and Bruce."</p><p>Post-The Avengers, bit angsty drabble. Not about a quiz show.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What is the Paleolithic era?

Clint has recurring dreams of getting hammered on a quiz show by Tony and Bruce. Figuratively, of course.

> "I'll have Clint Barton for $800."
> 
> "Hawkeye uses a bow and arrow from this epoch."
> 
> _Bzzz._
> 
> "What is the Paleolithic era?"

He's not stupid. Not in everyday stuff, anyway. Not when it comes to the field, when there's fist-to-fist, frame-by-frame action. He's got, well, street smarts. Give him a target, he can sink an arrow in it. But when it goes to comes to pure, academic intelligence, Clint knows he doesn't shine a candle to either of them. To _any_ of them. No matter what Phil says. Said.

Tony... it's easy to forget Tony's cleverness, despite the fact that he is the biggest civilian name in the room for his, in his own words, genius. It's just that Tony's tendency to _get_ to people (Clint excluded) half the time triggers an automatic tendency to just tune him out. Plus, he hardly looks like the kind of guy that possesses his number of IQ points. A stocky bearded man wearing a glowing AC/DC shirt doesn't exude 'nerd'. Phil does. Did.

Bruce, though. Bruce is mild-mannered (when he's not busy being The Other Guy). He's quiet. Unassuming. Modest. This makes it all the more painfully obvious that he's got a doctorate degree and Clint only barely scraped through a GED at Phil's insistence. It's like when Bruce casually drops technobabble about condensed matter physics or cellular microbiology whatever the hell it is and Clint's brain goes a mile a minute trying to work it out. Inevitably someone (usually Tony) picks up on it and the conversation races off, leaving Clint in the dust before he even has time to figure out what's going on. Each time, he wants to bury himself in the rafters and turn down his hearing aids until the world is quiet. And the worst thing is that Bruce… Bruce intellectually outshines the team without even wanting to (unlike a certain iron-suited teammate). He would probably display horror, not braggadocio, at mentally one-upping another person. Ironically, the fact that The Other Guy could really use a kindergarten English lesson makes it even more clear that Bruce is Just. Damn. Smart. Pepper would call it juxtaposition. Clint wouldn't know what that meant.

So, yeah. He sees better from a distance, whatever that means. But he also operates better when quantum physicists aren't scuttling around, muttering things he doesn't understand and will never understand. 

He's not stupid. He knows that. Sometimes he has a hard time believing it, though.


End file.
